For today’s post, I give you another lesson to help you understand more about Autism.

Many people who are autistic have sensitive sensory systems. Sights, sounds, visual input can be irritating to overwhelming. I will not claim everyone who is autistic has the same sensitivities, but I can tell you my experiences with them. For this post, I will limit my sensitivities to two areas, smell and visual.

Smell

One thing that almost always sets me into the overload mode is mint. I just can’t tolerate it in any form. In my early years, I couldn’t understand why? Of course, that sensitivity causes problems in many areas. Go to your local drug store and try to find a toothpaste without mint, it’s nearly impossible. I once had an office mate who open-chewed spearmint gum. When he opened a stick, I always went to the restroom or the lab area. I never told him that mint set me off.

Perfume, especially the overwhelming variety, was intolerable. It took a while before I shared with my wife-to-be that I had trouble smelling her perfume. Luckily, she caught on and stopped using it. But there were those in the office who wore perfume, I could smell it when I got within 50 feet of their chair. I usually held my breath when I had to walk down their hallway.

Other smells that set me off were: exhaust fumes, certain cleaning supplies, most air fresheners and Listerine, which was simply unbearable. I recognized early on that I had a strong sense of smell.

Visual

My second area of sensitivity is visual. I have covered my aversion to eye-contact many times here at RJsCorner, so I will put that one aside for this post. Bright lights are very annoying to me. That is one of the reasons I have never felt comfortable driving at night, or on a sunny day without sunglasses. Blue lights, for some reason, are on this list. Glare is another.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I seem to have this talent of being able to see details around me that others can’t.

Not related to sight itself, there are things that bother me. The most obvious is clutter. I insist on things being orderly and usually clean. I prefer certain fonts to others when I read. With the right font (PT Serif) I could read at about 400 words/minute. Due to old age, I can’t read that fast anymore. Most of my books now reside on my Kindle reader, where I can adjust the font, and size.

Another strong category in this list for many Autistics is sound. Being deaf has for the most part eliminated this area of sensitivity. My tinnitus, which is a double frequency of ringing and roaring, is always there, but my brain usually manages to ignore that fact.